Less area muggles

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Starkacher
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Less area muggles

Post by Starkacher »

The first Toledo Area Metroparks Outdoor Adventure Expo will be held Saturday May 31 Noon - 4PM at Side Cut Metropark. They will have hands-on demonstrations/classes for a variety of outdoor activities. One of the activities they are featuring is Geocaching. There will be a couple of sessions teaching Geocaching. It is being taught by a Metroparks employee. I will be a volunteer assistant for the classes.
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TeamMina
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Re: Less area muggles

Post by TeamMina »

Sounds cool!

Learn It, Try It At Outdoor Adventure Expo


Kayaking, bicycling and other forms of outdoor recreation are growing in popularity, and Metroparks is offering new programs to help people enhance their skills and plan their summer adventures.

Many of the new outdoor skills programs will be featured during an Outdoor Adventure Expo, May 31 from noon to 4 p.m. at Side Cut Metropark in Maumee. Activities will be held at the Silver Lake Area.

Canoeing and kayaking; backpacking, day hiking and camping; fishing, wildlife watching, geocaching and bicycling are among the activities that visitors can try or learn more about during the free community event. Food vendors will be available.

Informational workshops and Try It events will be offered by Metroparks staff and representatives of local outfitters and non-profit organizations.
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Starkacher
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Re: Less area muggles

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I supplied a variety of sample cache containers for the class session as they did not have many to show. These included a 5 gallon bucket, an ammo can, a magnetic key holder, a bison tube, a nano and a few others including the stick cache I made at the Maker Madness event. The nano and the stick cache (as I twisted it open) caused a few oohs and ahs from the crowd. The Metroparks put out 7 easy to find temporary caches for the 35 (or so) newly converted geocachers to find along a couple of the paths. The caches contained a paper with a fun fact question about the metropark and gave the answer. The groups were given a logsheet to record the answers as proof of finding the temp caches. My job after the short intro class, was to walk the paths and help the students with any GPSr issues or help guide them to the caches if they were struggling to locate it. Each group was assigned a starting cache so that they would not all be going for the same one at the same time. It was fun seeing the enjoyment that these folks had finding their first caches. The Metroparks had a few caches that were out in the open as you walked the path. Humm... difficulty 0? There were a few with an UPoS (unusual pile of sticks - but not as many sticks as we usually see, so that the containers were still partially visable) and a few partially covered with dried leaves. One was at a base of a tree 42 feet from GZ (a good lesson in two ways right?) One was on a side path that was within the accuracy range of the main path. That one even fooled me for about 5 minutes on my test run. I had to help quite a few groups with that one also. It was that one and the one that was off by 42 (or so) feet that caused the most problems for the students. After finding as many of the caches as they wanted, the students would return to the starting point and return the borrowed GPSr and select a (really cheap) prize from a bin.
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Starkacher
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Re: Less area muggles

Post by Starkacher »

PS. After about 4 hours of doing this, I had to stop and find a real geocache on the way home to satisfy my Geofix.
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TeamMina
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Re: Less area muggles

Post by TeamMina »

We stopped by to see how it was going.
All Mina wanted was to get into the Maumee.

Looked like the event, and the geo-demo, had a good turn-out. :D
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SuchaNana
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Re: Less area muggles

Post by SuchaNana »

congrats jim on a job well done - you do us all proud !!
SuchaNana...Life is STILL an Adventure...
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